The group from the Chinese University said on Nov 23 that according the elder statesman such an honour would tantamount to approving what they claimed was his authoritarian rule during his 31 years as prime minister of the island republic.

"Giving Lee Kuan Yew such an honour is to agree with his high-handed political rule and his suppression of freedom and his suppression of political opponents," said Wong Hiu-chong, a spokeswoman for the Students Union at the Chinese University.

The website, "go.to/sayno-lky," has won backing from some 300 students, academics, alumni and members of the public since going online late last week.

"Press freedom has been curtailed, opposition parties and voices severely suppressed and the people's daily life controlled by the omnipresent government power," the students said in their protest letter at the opening of their website.

Wong said the union had invited university chiefs, who plan to confer Lee the honorary doctorate on December 7, to a meeting Nov 30 to try to get then to change their decision.

The students would determine what action to take should the university go ahead with its decoration for Lee, Wong said.

Lee stepped down as Singapore's prime minister in 1990 and now holds the title of senior minister.

The website, which was most critical of Singapore's one-party dominated politics and curbs on freedoms, has drawn a flurry of opinions from visitors.

Tsui Hon Kwong, who identified himself as a former Singapore student leader in exile, spoke of being interviewed and warned against involving himself in the student movement in the 1970s, and later having had his scholarship stripped.

But the site also elicited angry responses from a few Singaporeans. "You people are not Singaporeans, do not live in Singapore, how would you know what life is really like over there?" wrote one viewer who identified herself as Sharon Tan.

"Singapore is a prosperous city with good leaders who manage the nation well."